Building permits rose 8.8% to $13.6 billion in August 2026, led by multi-unit housing

The national numbers

The short answer: apartments and townhouses drove the month; houses held steady; commercial dipped.

On a constant-dollar basis (2023 = 100), the total was up 12.4% from August 2025. Municipalities authorized about 21,800 multi-unit and 4,000 single-family dwellings in the month, 12.8% more than in July. Over the 12 months from September 2025 to August 2026, 299,500 dwellings were authorized, slightly fewer than the 305,500 of the previous 12 months.

Province by province

Monthly permit values move a lot, so read these as a snapshot, not a trend.

• Ontario: $5.1 billion, up 9.4%.
• Quebec: $2.9 billion, up 3.9%.
• British Columbia: $2.1 billion, up 7.5%.
• Alberta: $2.0 billion, up 21.7%.
• Manitoba: $0.5 billion, up 26.9%.
• Saskatchewan: $0.3 billion, up 15.9%.
• Nova Scotia: $0.2 billion, up 21.0%.
• New Brunswick: $0.2 billion, down 35.6%.
• Newfoundland and Labrador: $0.1 billion, down 14.6%.
• Prince Edward Island: $0.1 billion, down 12.2%.

Our coverage pages put these figures next to each province's regulators and programs.

What multi-unit growth means for plumbing companies

Multi-unit permits mean rough-in and finishing work on apartments, stacked townhouses and mixed-use buildings, usually sold to general contractors rather than homeowners. That is a different kind of selling from residential service work.

If you want a share of it:

1. Know the builders. Permit data at municipal level shows who is active; most municipalities publish issued permits.
2. Build a commercial capability page with project types, crew size, safety programs and the code editions you work to, such as the BC Plumbing Code 2024 or Ontario's 2024 code.
3. Show references you are allowed to show. Builders ask for them; get permission first.

What it means for service and replacement work

New dwellings become service customers later. A building authorized today will need warranty calls, then fixture swaps, then water heater replacements over the following years. Areas with heavy multi-unit approvals are areas where strata managers and property managers will become an important part of your customer base.

For residential service companies, a few practical steps:

• Add property-manager pages that explain how you handle multi-unit service: access, tenant notice, invoicing.
• Target new neighbourhoods in local search before they are crowded with competitors.
• Watch single-family flat lines. If single-family permits stay flat where you work, replacement and renovation will matter more than new-build in your marketing.

A worked example: is new-build worth chasing?

Suppose a residential plumbing company with six trucks is deciding whether to bid on multi-unit rough-in. Permit data says multi-unit work is where the growth is. The decision still comes down to margin and cash flow.

Say a 40-unit project is worth $320,000 in plumbing, at a 15% gross margin, so $48,000 of gross profit. Payment arrives in progress draws, often 30 to 60 days after each stage, with a holdback retained until the end. Meanwhile, the same crews could run service calls that might earn a higher margin and are paid on the day. If two trucks are tied up for four months, the question is whether $48,000, paid late, beats the service gross profit those trucks would have earned.

For some companies the answer is yes, because steady new-build work smooths out slow months. For others it is no. Run your own numbers before the permit headlines make the decision for you.

Reading the data honestly

Permit values are not the same as construction starts, and monthly figures are revised. Statistics Canada notes the constant-dollar comparison for year-over-year changes; the monthly provincial values in this story are in current dollars. Use them as one signal among several, alongside your own call volume.

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